Courtesy: European Union
The EU’s Indo-Pacific strategy comes better late than never. But it has to step gingerly. It cannot antagonize China, wants to build on the legacy of its members’ colonial past, give the region the infrastructure it needs, and make the trade agreements that it wants. Is it achievable?
Courtesy: Twitter
The U.S. Navy Secretary, Kenneth Braithwaite, visited India on 17 Dec 2020. Will this year-end visit culminate in the reactivation of the First Fleet under the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command? The First Fleet, is likely to be an expeditionary fleet - one without a shore-based headquarters and assigned primary responsibility for the Indian Ocean and parts of Pacific Ocean bordering South Asia. Its reactivation will emphasise the strategic importance of this region. It will also relieve the burden of the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet headquartered in Japan, that is deployed for operations in this vast oceanic space.
Courtesy: MEA Flickr
The key global powers are redefining their roles in the Indo-Pacific to promote national interest. China’s rise and increased activism in South Asia and the Indian Ocean region is an uncontested reality even as Asian countries worry about the new cold war in which the U.S. and China are locked. The Quadrilateral Dialogue has reemerged to prevent a unipolar Asia — these are some of the trends unfolding in this arena
Courtesy: Financial Express
India can draw Canada in a new direction – away from its trans-Atlantic fixation, into the Indo-Pacific and a tech and resources partnership that will benefit both democracies
Courtesy: Gateway House
This version of the Gateway House Map on China’s Expanding Global Telecom Empire identifies some more telecommunication assets -- optic-fibre and satellite ground stations -- that Beijing is working on in South and Central America, Africa, Myanmar, the Indian Ocean Region and mainland China besides the existing ones, such as the Pakistan East Africa Cable Express (PEACE). It shows the direction China’s investment is taking, its diplomatic overtures and the larger geopolitical implications of its growing telecom empire
Courtesy: Gateway House
China is steadily deploying state-of-the-art communications systems to connect its strategic and economic assets in Asia. It is then linkingthe Asian mainland to Africa, and Africa to South America. The investment spree is rapidly making Beijing a major player in global telecommunications – and ‘informationisation warfare’.
Courtesy: Indian Navy
A noticeable feature of 2017 was China’s aggressiveness, which it deployed openly to advance its interests in the eastern rim, Southeast Asia, Central Asia and South Asia. This could well be the impetus for the consolidation of a broad front of China-wary nations in 2018
Courtesy: PTI
The historical evolution of the Malabar Exercise and the currently fraught relations between the participating countries and China created a much sharper context for the event, with the Chinese evincing a heightened interest in it
Courtesy: MEA/ Flickr
The Indo-Pacific region is home to some of the largest and most rapidly growing economies as also powerful military forces. Nuclear threats, international terrorism and climate change are some of the issues that define the region. Uncertainty dogs relations among the four nations in the top league—U.S., China, India and Japan—but what is emerging is a hawkish, policy stance from the U.S. as opposed to an isolationist outlook apprehended earlier
Courtesy: Wikipedia
A strategic coming together of the U.S., Japan, Australia, and India was close to fruition some years ago, impelled initially by the tsunami of 2004. The spirit of the enterprise remains alive even now, and there are many merits in India joining the quad, but such an arrangement can skew existing Asian equations, jeopardising the Act East policy